Hmm, that's very odd, for two reasons. The first reason is that line 1 of that file is this:
/**
...and obviously, that's not an "if" statement. The first line of actual code (i.e. code that's not a comment) does include an "if" statement, but it's this one:
if (class_exists('SU_Module')) {
This is also odd because that same line exists at the beginning of every other module file too, so if that line was truly breaking author-links.php, then it should be breaking every other module as well. (In other words, if that line of code is the problem, then deleting author-links.php would not be effective at getting rid of the error.)
Not to alarm you or anything, but is there perhaps a virus on your site that could be adding code to the beginning of author-links.php? If you were to re-upload the file, and if your site were to crash again, would you be able to perhaps re-download it from your site, or else use a file editor in your web host's control panel, to view the contents of the author-links.php and see if there's any code added to the beginning? (or perhaps even code removed from the beginning?)
